OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Haiku Article in Software Design Magazine

Submitted by koki 2008-03-27 Haiku 16 Comments

As posted recently in the Haiku blogs, the April 2008 issue of the Japanese publication Software Design Magazine carries an article titled 'Writing Haiku: Begun in 2001, an open source replication of BeOS finally nears its alpha release' in its Pacific Connections series written by Bart Eisenberg. This is an eight pages long article that includes a full interview of Axel Dorfler, as well as comments from Bryan Varner (Haiku Java Port team lead) and Dane Scott, of TuneTracker fame. Go ahead and check out the English version of the article.

Digg

Thom Holwerda 2008-03-27 Comics 9 Comments

Comic: "Digg".

Safari on Windows: Decidedly Not Illegal, Font Fixes

Thom Holwerda 2008-03-27 Apple 58 Comments

The web has been abuzz the past two days with the 'news' that it was supposedly illegal to run Safari for Windows on anything but an Apple-branded computer. It was obviously a mistake, so I decided to run no story on it. Now, however, it has specifically been fixed by Apple; Ars decided to phone Apple PR, and they fixed the issue. The WebKit guys also offer a fix for the 'fuzzy fonts' issue on Safari for Windows.

Consumer Version of Surface Could Hit by 2011

Thom Holwerda 2008-03-27 Microsoft 8 Comments

In targeting casinos, restaurants, and hotels, Microsoft knows it is barely scratching the surface of the demand for its tabletop computer. The company is convinced there is a mass market for an interactive touch-screen computer, but perhaps not in its current USD 10000 version. CEO Steve Ballmer told financial analysts last month that Microsoft had a plan to speed up the arrival of a consumer version of the tabletop computer Surface.

Submitted by Philippe Mougin 2008-03-27 macOS 6 Comments

"Become an Xcoder is a free little eBook we wrote to help beginners with no or little programming experience to start their journey into the world of Mac OS X development with Objective-C and Cocoa. I'm glad to announce that the book has been updated for Leopard and Xcode 3, thanks to the work of Alex Clarke."

Windows XP SP3 RC2 Refresh Becomes available

Thom Holwerda 2008-03-26 Windows 7 Comments

Despite reports that Windows XP Service Pack SP3 would hit Release to Manufacturing soon after the RTW of Vista SP1, Microsoft has released yet another build of the next (and possibly last) service pack for its most popular operating system. The build, dubbed 'Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 2 Refresh' (not to be confused with SP3 RC2), does not contain many changes. According to Microsoft Technet, "Beyond fixes for common Windows Update issues and the inclusion of support for HD Audio, there are no substantial differences between this beta release (build 5508) and XP SP3 RC2 (build 3311)."

Keyboard PC Design Recalls Amiga Era

Thom Holwerda 2008-03-26 Hardware 30 Comments

"Fashion often repeats itself, with dated products reborn into popular products. Just think of VolksWagen’s Beetle or BMW's Mini. And now we can add the Commodore Amiga to the list, sort of, thanks to a new all-in-one PC with a look rather reminiscent of the home computer." This design was also used by the MSX, my actual first computer experience (apart from a Binatone Mk. IV).

Motorola Implodes; Insider Tells All

Eugenia Loli 2008-03-26 Wireless 30 Comments

Motorola split into two groups today in order to save their falling mobile business, but the real kicker is an insider's email that Engadget published. It has it all, from suicides to golf scores and how all that brought a giant down. Good afternoon reading, albeit sad. Update: My personal rant/editorial on the situation, describing the failure of Motorola to understand the importance of their EZX Linux-based phones and how this drove their business down.

Submitted by Rahul 2008-03-26 Fedora Core 5 Comments

"It's been almost two months since Fedora 9 Alpha was released, which we subsequently previewed. Now with the release of Fedora 9 just being 35 days out, Red Hat has pushed out the beta release of Fedora 9 (codenamed Sulphur) with many more features implemented and ready to be tested. We have taken the time to explore the features of Fedora 9 and the progress that has been made."

Submitted by ohxten 2008-03-26 OS News 22 Comments

"Whitix is a 32-bit operating system for the Intel and AMD range of processors, licensed under the GNU GPL. It features a C compiler (tcc), Python, assembler (nasm), text editor, shell and filesystem formatter. See the Introduction to Whitix for more information." Version 0.03 was released a month ago. My, aren't we sharp today.

Submitted by ohxten 2008-03-26 Opera 37 Comments

"Since the test was officially announced recently, our core developers have been hard at work fixing bugs and adding the missing standards support. Today we reached a 100% pass rate for the first time! There are some remaining issues yet to be fixed, but we hope to have those sorted out shortly."

Preview: Ubuntu 8.04 Beta

Thom Holwerda 2008-03-26 Ubuntu 82 Comments

It is that time of year again: a new Ubuntu release is upon us. The beta version of Ubuntu 8.04 was released a few days ago, so I decided to give it a try and see what new features and improvements they have shoved into this one. As always, this is as much a preview of the latest GNOME release (2.22) as it is of Ubuntu itself. Read on for the preview.

Submitted by Rahul 2008-03-26 Red Hat 6 Comments

New Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst says his company must be a defining technology company of the 21st century and provide more leadership to companies that are willing to co-develop software with open source projects and with other companies. "Ninety-five percent of software is developed by enterprises each year and is not for resale," involving a lot of re-inventing of the wheel by different firms. "There's hundreds of billions of dollars of wasted software assets each year," he said in an address to the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco Tuesday.

Oracle Expands Its Linux Base

Thom Holwerda 2008-03-26 Databases 9 Comments

"So how is Oracle doing with its Oracle Unbreakable Linux? Pretty well. According to Monica Kumar, senior director Linux and open source product marketing at Oracle, there are now 2000 customers for Oracle's Linux. Those customers will now be getting a bonus from Oracle: free clustering software."

BeBook, Be Newsletters Available Online

Thom Holwerda 2008-03-25 Haiku 17 Comments

I have no idea how I missed it (seriously) but read this: "It's been almost one year since we announced our conversations with ACCESS Co. Ltd. targeted at releasing legacy BeOS related documents, and ~~today~~ last week we were happy to inform the community that this project has finally arrived to a happy conclusion: the BeBook and all the Be Newsletters are now available online. As an emerging open source project, documentation for Haiku is still hard to come by; and while our Documentation Team works on creating Haiku-specific material, the BeBook and the Be Newsletters will provide valuable reference material for all developers, new and experienced alike."

Windows Mobile 6.1 To Be Released on 1 April?

Thom Holwerda 2008-03-25 Wireless 7 Comments

"Pocket-lint has learnt from sources close to the matter that Microsoft will announce the much-rumoured refresh to its mobile phone operating system, Windows Mobile, on 1 April 2008. An improvement over Windows Mobile 6 released in February 2007 the new version, unsurprisingly named 6.1, will be a stop-gap measure to keep both consumers and industry happy until the launch of Windows Mobile 7."

Fedora 9 Beta Released

Thom Holwerda 2008-03-25 Fedora Core 18 Comments

The beta version of Fedora 9 has been released. It comes with GNOME 2.22, KDE 4.0.2, Firefox 3.0 beta 5, PackageKit, Kernel 2.6.25-rc5, and much more. "The Beta release is the point at which we really want and need the wider community's help with testing. Beta is a point of much greater stability in Fedora's development branch, but some fixes continue to occur to improve usability, performance, and stability."

‘Safari 3.1 on Windows: a True Competitor Arrives (Seriously)’

Thom Holwerda 2008-03-25 Apple 65 Comments

"While pundits have been lamenting the fact that Apple's 'software update' program on Windows is now pushing Safari 3.1 to users, we thought we'd check out Safari 3.1 to find out if Apple has made any real progress on the Windows version of this browser. After all, it's about the software, right? We put the Safari 3 beta on Windows through the wringer last summer, and we weren't too terribly impressed. The problems were significant, such that we'd have a hard time recommending the browser to any Windows user. As of last summer, Firefox was still the Windows browser of choice here at Ars. Have things improved for Safari? Wow, have they."

Submitted by irbis 2008-03-25 Oracle and SUN 14 Comments

As computers chip continue to decrease in fabrication size, manufacturers such as AMD and Intel are researching new ways to overcome physical barriers. Die size, performance, operating frequency and heat are all major obstacles in the semiconductor industry. Sun Microsystems announced that in partnership with Luxtera, Kotura and Stanford University, it is working on an ambitions project to move data transmissions from electrical signals over copper wires to pulses of light using lasers.

Click Right on with RISC OS

Thom Holwerda 2008-03-24 RISC OS 7 Comments

"When asked what they most like about RISC OS, many enthusiasts are likely to mention the fluid, slick and intuitive manner with which user and computer interact. In other words, the graphical user interface, or the GUI as the geeks would have us call it. With RISC OS, the GUI encourages all applications to work in a similar way, and to have the same feel. Faced with new RISC OS software, a user already has a good idea of how to drive it and explore."